


Curtain Fall

by cunning_capra



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Angst, M/M, Persona 5: The Royal, Purple Prose, Short One Shot, spoilers for third semester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:20:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25299766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cunning_capra/pseuds/cunning_capra
Summary: Akechi wonders what it would be like, to pull back the mask. To accept this reality.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 5
Kudos: 23





	Curtain Fall

**Author's Note:**

> A very short, very pretentious piece about dreams and reality.   
> Was intended as something else (oops) but the angst train hit me hard.

Akechi doesn’t believe this is a second chance.

Second chances aren’t an old puppet restrung - jerked to and fro to a melody no one else can hear. They aren’t higher stakes and even higher tensions. Aren’t Eurydice - tenuous life beating in someone else’s hands- waiting for Orpheus to turn around. For her reality to dissolve. 

And maybe it’s facetious he thinks, to reduce life to this. To a fairytale, coming unspooled at his own hands. Wishes discarded. Hope lost. 

He watches Akira over the rim of his glass; watches the leader of the Phantom Thieves wearily slump against their table in the Jazz Club. His life hangs by a string. It dangles before him in the tired form of a teenage boy, overwhelmed with duty.

Akechi, of all people, knows the danger of dreams.

“What,” He says, jostling Akira’s leg with his foot when Akira makes no move to sit up properly, “was the point of inviting me out if you’re just going to sleep?”

Akira groans. Doesn’t move.

“This is a waste of my time.” He thinks of the sand running out.. He thinks of a clock, steadily counting down to twelve. 

He thinks of relieved eyes in the bright lights of a new reality, meeting his in a sea of absurdity. In a world full of possibility and unknowns. 

But Akechi knows himself. And Akechi knows the natural order of things.

He sighs. Gets to his feet.

Pauses.

What would it feel like, he wonders. To pull back the curtain. To let Akira light his candle and come to terms with the monster in the darkness.

“I’m dead.” He could say. “I’m going to die.”

He wonders what it would feel like. What he looks like under the mask now. What Akira would see. A monster fat on the grief of his friends, a gun pressed to his head, a closing bulkhead- 

“I don’t want to die.” He could say just as easily. Akira would let him. Would let him live. Would offer up the pomegranate seeds, and kiss the juice from his sobbing mouth. Would hold him till morning, and in the light of day. Tell him that he was a kid and he didn’t know any better-

He could hang up the mask. Throw it away.

But no. His life is not this. It is not selkie giving up her seal skin. Her freedom. It is not giving in to this reality. It is not letting Akira make the wrong choice.

“I’m going,” Akechi says.

When the moment is right. When the clock runs out. When the hero has to weigh the choice- a life against a dream. A dream against a life. 

“What will you choose?” He’ll say, and pray for his strings to be cut. 

Akechi cannot take the easy route. He has not made it this far, clawing and screaming and breaking, to take the easy route. No three wishes. No happy ending.

Just. Life.

“Don’t go.” Akira says. He has lifted his head, looking up at him, glasses crooked, and Akechi’s heart gives a sad, frozen lurch.

But Akechi’s mind is made up.

He doesn’t look back.


End file.
